A historical approach to The Guest - Essay Example

The story’s rich historical derivation makes it ideal for an examination through the lenses of historical criticism, as such, one can examine the occurrences themes and stylistic and the impacts of the larger historical backdrop both within and without the text. Concisely, the story revolves around three major characters are Daru, Baducci the gendarme and the Arab prisoner. Daru is a schoolteacher stationed in the desert school where the gendarme brings the Arab who has been accused of murder.

Daru receives them hospitably and makes them tea in the schoolroom; he unties the prisoner’s hands and makes both of the as comfortable as he could with his limited facilities. That he takes off the ropes binding the prisoner, connotes the shame felt by colonialist for treating their subjects as if they were less than human (Just 904). Daru is told that the French suspect an uprising, he should deliver the prisoner to the town so that the gendarme can return and prepare in case it materializes the schoolteacher however turns down the task of delivering the prisoner.

Balducci tells him it is an orderfrom the authorities but Daru insists that he will not comply; he does not stop him from leaving the prisoner there and even signs a document to attest to the fact. Daru accommodates the prisoner for the night, the next morning, despite his insistence that he would not take him to the authorities; he leads him in the direction of the town. Halfway there, he stops at a crossroads and tells him he can choose to deliver himself to the police or he can escape. He gives the prisoner food and money and leaves him to make up his mind.

He heads back to the school where ironically, someone has written on the board that he would pay for the delivering “their brother”. Here, Camus uses dramatic irony to bring out the absurdity of the situation in which Daru finds himself because had Author of the threat known